The streets of our town

22 July 2002 — 10:00am

Major demographic changes are sweeping across Melbourne. The city's wealth has become more unevenly spread, its ethnic make-up has altered radically and settlement patterns are in upheaval as some suburbs become magnets for young families while others become bastions of the aged.

According to an analysis by The Age of the latest census figures, divisions between rich and poor Melbourne residents are sharpening along geographic lines as incomes in the wealthiest suburbs soar and leave the battlers behind.

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A small group of suburbs has become an enclave of the rich. In municipal areas that include the suburbs of Camberwell, Toorak, Brighton, Kew, Malvern and Middle Park, about one-third of men aged between 25 and 44 earned more than $1000 a week in 1996. By 2001 the proportion of men earning more than $1000 leapt to more than half in Brighton, Camberwell and Middle Park and almost half in the other suburbs.

During the same period, the incomes of poorest paid men in Melbourne aged between 25 and 44 rose. But the improvement was marginal compared with the much faster rise in earnings for those living in the wealthiest areas, according to Monash University's Dr Bob Birrell, who helped The Age prepare this analysis.

Melbourne's growth spurt

For the first time since the mid-1990s the city's population growth is being driven by the Australian-born instead of by foreign migrants. Unlike Sydney, Melbourne is having greater success keeping its Australian-born residents and attracting others from interstate, especially Queensland.

Victoria's capital accounted for 21 per cent of the nation's population growth, including overseas-born migrants, between 1996-2001, compared with 11 per cent from 1991 to 1996. The growth spurt is the largest among all capital cities, including Sydney.

Melbourne's main source of growth was home-grown. Its Australian-born population increased by 22 per cent while its overseas-born constituency rose by 19 per cent. By contrast, Sydney's growth was fuelled by a 43 per cent jump in its overseas-born residents and only 9 per cent growth in Australian-born.

"All of the public discussion in recent years has been about Melbourne's multiculturalism, such as it being the Greek capital of the Antipodes," says Dr Birrell, director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research. "But the unsung story of the second half of the '90s is that Melbourne has been attracting the Australian-born and the flow to the north has been staunched. By comparison, Sydney is leaking its Australian-born citizens but is attracting a disproportionate share of overseas-born. The two cities are diverging."

The new faces among Melbourne's migrants

Dramatic changes have occurred within the city's intake of overseas-born migrants compared with the previous 1996 census. The flow of migrants from some traditional source nations has stalled while other countries, particularly China and those from the subcontinent, have emerged as new leaders in the migrant intake.

The changes in Melbourne's 2001 settlement patterns reveal:

Vietnamese arrivals have halved, due to refugee flows from Vietnam drying up. Most new settlers came under the family reunion category.

Mediterranean migrants have reduced to a trickle. Only 569 Greeks and 653 Italians arrived during the past five years.

New arrivals from China almost doubled, and settlers from each of Malaysia, Indonesia and East Timor more than doubled. Meanwhile, those from Singapore more than tripled.

Migrants from India almost doubled and those from Pakistan more than tripled.

Birrell says nations such as Italy and Greece no longer dominate Australia's migrant intake because their citizens belonged to a booming, integrated European economy.

"The economic and family chains have well and truly broken; you don't get young second and third-generation Australians going back to Italy or Greece to find a bride or groom. But Middle Eastern and Indo-Chinese Australians are doing that because the family chains are still very strong."

The transformation of migrant bastions

Some of Melbourne's most famous multicultural suburbs are undergoing a demographic upheaval and losing the long-time residents who helped create the ethnic diversity of these areas.

The percentage of Richmond residents born overseas fell from 44 per cent to 36 per cent in the past five years and the percentage living in the City of Darebin-Northcote fell from 45 per cent to 37 per cent. Now both areas have percentages of overseas-born residents lower than the Melbourne average of 38 per cent.

Other areas renowned as multicultural melting pots, such as Brunswick, Coburg, Maribrynong and Moonee Valley West, have recorded sharp falls in the level of overseas-born residents during the past four years.

The owner of the Northcote newsagency and treasurer of Ruckers Hill Traders Association, Jean Luc Giummarra, has seen startling changes in his suburb in the past 18 months since housing prices have skyrocketed. Ten years ago, unrenovated, single-fronted weatherboard houses sold for $45,000. Now they sell for more than $300,000.

The people moving into Giummarra's street and the new customers walking into his shop are noticeably different from the locals. "There's been a massive swing towards the Australian-born, young yuppie crowd moving in," he says. "A lot of the elderly people we've known are passing away, or going to retirement homes or going to live with other family members.

"This area used to be a working suburb, now it's very much an area of young professionals."

Where are poorer new arrivals settling?

Many people from some of Melbourne's largest groups of new arrivals - those born in Vietnam, the former Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka - are heading to the outer areas near Dandenong, Springvale, Broadmeadows and Sunshine where houses are cheaper.

Springvale has become Melbourne's most multicultural area with 68 per cent of its residents born overseas. Other outer areas, not often thought of as home to big immigrant populations, have some of Melbourne's largest concentrations of overseas born. In the City of Casey-Hallam, where many families are struggling financially, 59 per cent of residents were born overseas. Another low-income area, the City of Whittlesea South, which includes Epping and Mill Park, has also become a migrant heartland, with more than half of its residents born overseas.[FUXhead1]Where are rich new arrivals settling?South Africans, who tend to be wealthier than most migrants, have settled in large numbers in areas such as Doncaster, Templestowe, Bulleen, Caulfield and Carnegie.

Wealthy Asian migrants, particularly from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, are flocking to the new high-rise apartments of Melbourne's central business district and the tower blocks on its fringes. The proportion of overseas-born residents in the CBD leapt from 33 per cent to almost 50 per cent during the past five years.

But the biggest demographic shake-up occurred in an area defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as Melbourne Remainder, which includes Carlton, North Melbourne, East Melbourne and parts of St Kilda Road. It has attracted 6509 new arrivals since 1996 - more than any other area of Melbourne. Anton Wongtrakun, whose real estate agency Dingle Partners specialises in city properties, estimates 30 per cent of his clients wanting to buy or rent apartments were born overseas, mainly in Asia. "We get a lot of students from very wealthy families and a lot of business people... they're not in a refugee-type situation."

The municipalities of the City of Monash and the City of Manningham are also undergoing an ethnic makeover by migrants with business and IT skills. Large numbers of new arrivals, mainly from India, Malaysia, Hong Kong and China, are moving into the area's large, brick-veneer family homes and contributing to the high concentrations of overseas-born residents. Almost half of the people living in the City of Monash's south-west and Waverley East areas were not born in Australia.

Baby belts

Keilor, Melton, Werribee, Broadmeadows, Sunbury, Pakenham, Berwick, Cranbourne, Yarra Junction Frankston East - Melbourne's outermost suburbs have become the city's baby belt, home to the highest concentrations of babies and young children aged under 14. Almost 30 per cent of the people in many of these fringe suburbs are under 14 years old, compared with 21 per cent across Melbourne.

This poses problems for the state and federal governments in meeting the surging demand for child-care services, schools and other infrastructure.

The City of Casey is feeling the strain more than most local governments. The number of children aged four or under is higher than the adult and child populations of 23 other Victorian municipalities. Within 20 years Casey's overall population will be the size of Canberra's.

The city's chief executive officer, Mike Tyler, says funding formulas used by federal and state governments to provide community services are often too inflexible to respond quickly enough to the needs of rapidly growing areas. This leaves residents languishing for years without facilities that their counterparts in the inner city and middle suburbs take for granted.

Four years ago the council begged the former Kennett government, and then lobbied the Bracks Government, to build a primary school for the 650 primary-school-age children in Narre Warren South - Victoria's fastest growing suburb - who were forced to travel daily to neighbouring areas to attend school.

The council was granted its wish last year when the State Government announced it would build four schools in Casey, including one in Narre Warren South.

"We constantly have to tell governments they can't just respond to past growth," Tyler says. "They've got to realise growth is continuing and they need to provide more facilities for people who've moved in since they started thinking about providing the facilities they've just built."

Greying regions

Heidelberg, Camberwell north, Mornington Peninsula, Brighton, Box Hill, Nunawading, Caulfield - many of Melbourne's southern suburbs have a rapidly ageing population, with the percentages of people aged over 65 well above the 12 per cent for Melbourne overall.

The southern region of the Mornington Peninsula, a popular area for retirees, has by far the city's highest concentration of elderly people. It is Melbourne's grey capital, with 27 per cent of residents aged over 65, and a quarter aged between 45 and 64.

The census shows that 21 out of Melbourne's 75 districts categorised by the ABS have high concentrations of elderly people, a pattern that reflects the national trend of an ageing population and low birthrate.